June 20, 2014 AT 5:00 pm

How to Make Astrid’s Axe

If you’re dressing as Astrid from How to Train Your Dragon, you’re going to need an axe. According to Instructables user Kion Designs, you can build one with a small budget and a free Friday night. She used a sheet of foam about 5 cm thick and sketched the general shape of the axe on it. After she cut it out, she smoothed it with an X-acto knife:

Use an X-acto knife or cutter to sharpen the axe’s blades.

I used a 6x100cm round wood as the handle and glued both sides of the axe to it using hot glue.

Support the construction with a little bit of tape!

After the shape was right, she sanded the surface to make it smooth and covered everything but the axe’s edges with a thin piece of foam to add support. You could probably also do this with glue. Once it was covered, she sprayed on dark gray paint and touched it up with some silver paint to create a metal effect. She added some authenticity to the axe’s handle by added some notches and scratches with a scissor to make it look like it’d been used in a battle.